she’s very nervous.’ I asked why. He said, ‘She’s very uptight be-
cause she thinks she can’t cry. She had some terrible problems
crying in Up the Sandbox, and in her head she equates that with
being a bad actress, so she’s very nervous.’
“We have a device in the picture business, little ammonia
crystals that go into a little test tube with holes in the bottom
like a salt shaker and gauze over the front end. The makeup
man blows in it, and the ammonia aroma comes out and gets in
your eyes and makes tears. It makes your eyes bloody and it
stinks, but it works for film. Barbra had the makeup man be-
hind the tree. I said to Howard, ‘I don’t believe she can’t cry.
Anybody who sings the way she sings can cry. You stay here. I
will go behind the tree. When I wave my hands, you roll the
camera.’
“I went back to the tree, and I found Barbra pacing. The
makeup man was there with his test tube, and I sent him away.
She got alarmed and said, ‘Where are you going? Wait, wait,
what are you doing?’ I said, ‘Just relax. Just relax.’ I went over
and I put my arms around her, and the minute I put my arms
around her, she just started to sob. And I waved my hand, and
he rolled the camera, and around the tree she went.
“Now, I didn’t say anything to her. I didn’t think up some
wonderful piece of direction to give her. But I knew that there
was juice going on in her, and she was just too tense to let it
come out. She had built it all up in her mind, and something
touched her when I put my arms around her. Something just
made her let loose. And she cried all the way through the pic-
ture. You can say, ‘How did you think of it? What made you
know what would work?’ To tell you the truth, I didn’t have
the faintest idea what I was going to do when I sent away the
makeup man. I just was so convinced that she could cry, be-
cause I had seen so much emotion in her work, and I knew
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